My last post on the Norfolk 16th century surname study has made me look at my medieval East Anglian roots a little differently. It suggests that there may have been a fair amount of mobility and migration in East Anglia, and from outside, from both Northern England, and from the nearby Continent. Although current commercial autosomal DNA tests for ancestry are clearly contradictory, behind them lays a common pattern. My auDNA is little bit more similar to people living on the Continent, in places like France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and also further to the south - than it is for most British testers. This is despite my known English family history and recorded ancestry. These commercial DNA tests usually claim to investigate your family ancestry over the past 250 - 500 years only. I'm convinced that is untrue. I can't help but see population background, and shared patterns from testers that have no known, or little known migration or admixture in places such as England, and Northern France. These appear to represent older migration and population admixture events that are shared across local genomes.

However, maybe there is something that these tests are telling me - but only after taking into account to the results of other British testers. I now believe that I may have underestimated mobility around East Anglia and England between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries - that precedes any of my recorded ancestry. I also feel the need to reassess Continental migration to East Anglia. It appears it was not all urban or bourgeois. The Anglo-Saxon fifth century AD may have marked the most significant migration event to south east Britain, but I know believe that I have underestimated how much migration and exchange has occurred across the North Sea ever since.

"Considerable personal mobility existed from the later Middle Ages. From the mid fourteenth century the loosening of seigneurial bonds allowed English people to become even more mobile. Landlords complained that tenants were deserting their holdings for better land elsewhere and that servants and labourers were seeking higher wages from other employers.".

"From the sixteenth century, migration and personal mobility becomes better documented. A study of tax records for Towcester in Northamptonshire showed a considerable turnover of the population between consecutive years. In 1525 47 of the 278 men taxed in the previous year had left. This unusually full source shows that six of the 47 had died and 41 had migrated. This represents a turnover rate of 16.9 per cent a year - higher than any other communities in pre-industrial England.".

The continuity (and discontinuity) of surnames over a period of time indicates the movement of individuals and families with the same surname in and out of the community. The small 'close' village of Glynde (population 216 in the 1801 census) lies three miles from the East Sussex county town of Lewes. Between 1558 and 1812 out of 444 different surnames that appeared in the parish register (excluding people whose only connection with the village was to marry in its church) 261 surnames (58.8 per cent) occurred only once and 71 per cent were found only during a period of 25 years or less.".

So, maybe I need to discard ideas of my mother's tight cluster of recorded ancestry as having been so localised for so long. Although, the density of the cluster does suggest that she probably have some direct ancestry in the Reedham area of East Norfolk for a very long time, perhaps back to the early medieval, there is also a good probability that her medieval ancestry stretched much further across the region, England, and to the Continent. Indeed, her known ancestral proximity to the coast and a tidal navigable river makes that Continental ancestry more likely. For my father's ancestry - the majority recorded East Anglian, but with known ancestry going back to Oxfordshire, Berkshire, London, and the East Midlands, this might be even more the case.

Tags

I spent too much money today on reading materials. I was delighted to find a used copy of The Norfolk Broads A landscape history by Tom Williamson 1997 (Manchester University Press). I had a copy of this excellent landscape history when it was published, but unfortunately lent it out, and never saw it again. A brilliant book for tying my mother's East Norfolk ancestors to their ancestral landscape.

The April 2017 edition of Current Archaeology magazine has an interesting article on an excavation of an Iron Age site in Fenland, and is celebrating their 50th anniversary of publication.

The real treasure of today's book shop excavation however, was an old booklet published in 1969 by Leicester University Press in their Department of English Local History Occasional Papers. It is entitled Norfolk Surnames in the Sixteenth Century by R.A McKinley. Flicking through it's pages on the way home, sitting on the bus, I was well, almost mind blown - as some of the conclusions knocked down some of my preconceptions of my Norfolk ancestry and heritage. An old, yellowing booklet that I've never heard of, found on a shelf in a second hand book shop in Norwich.

The book draws on surnames recorded in the County of Norfolk, during the 16th Century AD. It uses as it's sources several returns, and rolls particularly a military survey, and subsidy roll from between 1522 and 1525. I want to share at least some of the key points from two chapters of "Norfolk Surnames in the Sixteenth Century": 1) Surnames derived from localities in Norfolk, and 2) Locative surnames originating outside Norfolk.

1) Surnames derived from localities in Norfolk

The chapter begins by discussing the problems of using locative surnames in a study.

"The two main sources used for this study list 739 persons bearing locative surnames derived from places within Norfolk. Of these, only 23 were living at the places from which their names were derived.".

A table then shows the distances of the persons (still within the County of Norfolk) with these locative surnames from origin. 23 were still at the place of origin, 81 were still within 5 miles of it, 123 were within 6 - 10 miles away, 239 were 11 - 20 miles away, 151 were 21 - 30 miles away, and 122 lived over 30 miles from the locative place of origin. However, these are the locative surnames that still remain in Norfolk, that appear to have an origin within the County. Many more would have crossed county boundaries into Suffolk, Lincolnshire, etc.

"It seems probable from this evidence, however, that most Norfolk families must have changed their place of residence at least between the period when surnames became hereditary, and the early sixteenth century.".

There was no pattern to suggest a large migration from any one part of the County, to another.

2) Locative surnames originating outside Norfolk

"In the two main sources, there are 1,260 persons bearing surnames which can be derived with fair certainty from places in England, but outside Norfolk".

The author then discusses possible biases, for example, some parts of England appear to have generated more locative surnames than others. It also suggests that about a third of all English surnames are locative, and proposes a rough approximation, that this could "be about 2,500 persons of outside origin amongst the total of about 18,000 listed in the two main sources, or rather more than 13 per cent". This suggests quite a few people had been moving from other parts of England, into Norfolk between the 13th and 15th centuries AD.

Where were they from? The two main contributors were the neighbouring counties of Suffolk and Lincolnshire. Some had simply moved from close to the Norfolk county boundary.

Cambridgeshire, another neighbouring county, for some reason contributed far fewer. The East Midlands was also, surprisingly, not a major contributor of locative surnames in 16th Century Norfolk. There were no locative surnames from Wales.

Here is another surprise, Yorkshire turned our to be a common origin - equally spread through the three ridings. Each riding of Yorkshire had contributed about 40 persons in Norfolk with locative surnames. The author does point out that Yorkshire is a big county, and is particularly rich in locative surnames, however: "it is evident that there must have been considerable movement from Yorkshire to Norfolk. Yorkshire surnames are distributed throughout Norfolk in the early sixteenth century. They are not particularly concentrated in ports or coastal areas, and indeed, are as widespread in central Norfolk, well away from the sea, as in other parts of the county.".

There was also a notable contribution of locative surnames from NW England - Lancashire, Cumbria, and Westmorland.

The distribution of these surnames was by no means urban based. Yamouth and Norwich had lower concentrations than the average. These migrations look more rural.

There were very few surnames of any origin type that could be safely regarded as Welsh.

There were very few surnames of any origin type that could be safely regarded as Scottish.

The author then moves on to records of other foreign born aliens. I am aware of the influx of Dutch and Flemish religious refugees, into the City of Norwich during the early 16th Century, however, here I learn something new.

"there was certainly a considerable migration of aliens into Norfolk, and foreign immigrants came to reside in many Norfolk villages, not merely in a few ports or large towns. In 1436, for example, when many aliens took oaths of allegiance, 146 persons who took oath are noted as living in Norfolk. This was not the whole number of aliens in Norfolk...". A list in 1440 for example, lists 192 aliens residing in Norfolk at 62 different places. The author feels that those 15th Century records understate the real percentage of immigrants living in Norfolk at that time.

The Continental immigrants did not bring in many new surnames. Many had no surname listed, or had adopted local surnames. For example, immigrants listed at Norwich in 1440, included persons by the surnames Rider, Johnson, Forest, Skynner, Couper, Bush, Goldsmyth, and Glasier. Some surnames marking their nationality did survive in 16th Century Norfolk, such as French, Ducheman, Briton / Brett (Breton) etc.

Brancaster, a North Norfolk village.

In summary, what this book has taught me today:

Many families, despite our ideas of the dying fuedal system, were moving around East Anglia, and even England between the 13th and 16th centuries.

There were relatively few people in 16th century Norfolk, with origins in Scotland, or Wales, and perhaps few from the nearby East Midlands or Cambridgeshire. However, there was migration down from Northern England, particularly from Yorkshire, but even from NW England.

There were also migrations, from the nearby Continent, and these migrations (and the above Northern English) migrations were not strictly urban. They reached many villages.